The present invention is directed to a radio transceiver system architecture useful in communication devices operating in a wireless local area network (WLAN) and/or a wireless personal area network (WPAN). The term WLAN is used to refer to a class of wireless communication technology that operates at a distance up to 100 meters, and WPAN is commonly used to refer to a class of wireless communication technology that operates up to a distance of 10 meters. For simplicity, when used herein, the term WLAN is meant to encompass WLAN as well as WPAN technologies, and any other shorter-range wireless communication technology, particularly, but not limited to, those that do not require a license for operation by the Federal Communications Commission in the United States and other similar unlicensed bands outside of the U.S.
Generally, the unlicensed bands are at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. The 5 GHz unlicensed band consists of band segments that are not contiguous, whereas the 2.4 GHz unlicensed band is a single contiguous frequency band. As shown in the chart below, certain applications are served in particular unlicensed bands, depending on the application. Moreover, certain wireless communication technologies are used in the various bands.
Conventional practice is to design a radio transceiver targeted to the point solutions they are to be used in. For example, a radio transceiver to be used in a device that operates using the Bluetooth(trademark) communication protocol is sized and customized to the Bluetooth protocol. Generally the same can be said for radio transceivers designed for use in devices that operate using the IEEE 802.11 communication protocol. However, there is a trend in which many applications of WLANs require that a communication device operate multiple communication protocol technologies, or operate multiple instances of the same communication protocol technology. For example, a computer laptop device may operate both 802.11 and Bluetooth.
Consequently, it is desirable to provide a radio transceiver system architecture that can be used for one or more communication protocol technologies in a flexible and scalable manner.
The present invention is directed to a wideband transceiver system architecture that features a shared radio frequency (RF) hardware section and a scalable baseband signal processing section. Baseband signal processing may be implemented with hardware, a digital signal processor (DSP), a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) or one or more application specific ICs (ASICS) allowing it to be readily configurable for different communication protocol standards. A radio architecture with configurable baseband processing allows multiple standards that operate over the same frequency band to share the same radio hardware implementation. A new standard can be supported by implementing the required additional firmware functionality in the baseband processing sections.
A configurable radio approach to the implementation of multiple technologies that share a common frequency band enables a lower cost solution by reducing the number of integrated circuits and additional filters and other passive components that would otherwise be required for implementations that use multiple separate chipsets for each technology. The implementation of the present invention enables chipset developers to benefit from IC cost reductions associated with reductions in digital CMOS IC geometry.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will become more readily apparent when reference is made to the following description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.